Articles by Oline Eaton
Gender, Place & Culture, 2019
Upon her death in 1994, Jacqueline Kennedy Onassis was repeatedly lauded for her ‘grace, dignity,... more Upon her death in 1994, Jacqueline Kennedy Onassis was repeatedly lauded for her ‘grace, dignity, style, class’, and this has remained the dominant discourse surrounding her public image in the years since. This article will historicize this dignity discourse in its contemporary political context, establishing the cultural contingency of the posthumous biographical accounts and revealing how the intimate public that “Jackie’s” narrative comprises has historically been embedded in, shaped by and reinforced ideologies of race and racialized American femininity. Analysis of the intersection of Onassis’s biographical narrative with those of Joycelyn Elders (Surgeon General of the United States, 1993-1994) and Michelle Obama (First Lady of the United States, 2009-2017) illuminates the ways in which Onassis’s image and the traditional femininity it has come to represent have been used to denigrate and reprimand Black women in the public sphere.
Bookmarks Related papers MentionsView impact
Life Writing, 2019
In 1973, Norman Mailer published a work of creative nonfiction about the life of the actor Marily... more In 1973, Norman Mailer published a work of creative nonfiction about the life of the actor Marilyn Monroe, entitled Marilyn: A Biography. Released amid a wave of American nostalgia for the 1950s and during the Watergate investigation, the book was upheld as evidence of a 'witch-hunt' Watergate culture. In this article, I will analyse the initial reception of Marilyn and its affective history. Situating Marilyn at the intersections of biography, New Journalism, and Watergate discourses demonstrates the important role historical context can play in analysis of celebrity biography. Considering Marilyn in its political, cultural, and literary context illuminates the ways in which the project's destabilisation of truth aligned with New Journalist pursuits while clashing with Watergate era longings for stability, a collision which excited the ire of many of its initial critics and an early reception that continues to shape responses to the work to this day.
Bookmarks Related papers MentionsView impact
Celebrity Studies, 2018
History, celebrity and everyday experience are often intimately woven together in ways that schol... more History, celebrity and everyday experience are often intimately woven together in ways that scholars have not yet rigorously investigated through the lens of temporality. In this article, I will examine the discursive convergence of unlikely narratives – often through the historical happenstance of their simultaneous occurrence – and argue that such convergences are fundamental to the ways in which celebrity life narratives circulate, evolve and are revised within culture. I will propose the method of historical adjacency for illuminating such convergences and use the life of Jacqueline Kennedy Onassis as a case study to examine the insight gained through analysis of such convergences, focusing particularly upon the revival of interest in her in 2001 and the co-opting of her life narrative into the contemporary narrative of female strength and dignity post 9/11.
Bookmarks Related papers MentionsView impact
Journal of American Studies, 2017
In modern life, we encounter stories of people with a frequency which would have been unfathomabl... more In modern life, we encounter stories of people with a frequency which would have been unfathomable even twenty years ago. In American culture, the lives of celebrities, in particular, have proven the dominant form of mainstream life-texts from the mid-twentieth century to the present day. Dynamic, volatile and open-ended, celebrity life narratives are useful for examining the renegotiation and revision of biographical narratives within culture over time. In this article, I will use the life of Jacqueline Kennedy Onassis to analyze a specific life-story's flow through culture. Focusing upon the intersections between multiple stories in a given historical moment, this article will demonstrate the revision such intersections prompt and the ways in which those revisions reverberate through subsequent scholarship. The article will argue that these narrative corruptions should be accounted for when we use stories of lives as a mode of cultural analysis.
Bookmarks Related papers MentionsView impact
The Journal of American Culture, 2016
The experience of being alive is characterized by an uncertainty and confusion, which historical ... more The experience of being alive is characterized by an uncertainty and confusion, which historical accounts of lives often fail to take into account. Providing evidentiary support for Peter N. Stearns’ claims in his work on the escalation of American fear across the late twentieth century, this article uses the life-narrative of Jacqueline Onassis to demonstrate how celebrity life narratives act as repositories of cultural anxieties, wherein emotional phenomena such as fear play out.
Bookmarks Related papers MentionsView impact
Still Point, 2017
Bookmarks Related papers MentionsView impact
Search for the Real: Authenticity and the Construction of Celebrity, 2014
In America, during the 1960s and '70s, there were more than twenty movie magazines circulating in... more In America, during the 1960s and '70s, there were more than twenty movie magazines circulating in any given month and, each month, Jacqueline Kennedy Onassis featured on the cover of a significant percentage. She never starred in a film, but her tabloid-self featured in the movie magazines to such an extent that Variety enthusiastically hailed Jackie as 'Undisputed Top Femme In [sic] World.' 1 Jackie's very appearance in the movie magazines suggested a massive shift from their original function as an advertising vehicle for motion picture stars. Both Elizabeth Taylor (known in the magazines as 'Liz') and Jackie Kennedy were exaggerated icons, however, Liz, an actress, was selling a product – herself and her movies. Because Jackie had no movies, her life itself was turned into a drama intended for the public's entertainment. By the early-1960s, it was playing out on newsstands all across the country. Initially, she was depicted as an ideal wife and mother, and the prevailing editorial policy of the tabloids was to feature her alongside Hollywood stars who misbehaved. Elizabeth Taylor quickly became her foil and the Jackie-Liz connection would become so integrated into popular culture that in The Greek Tycoon (1978), the Hollywood treatment of Jackie's life, the lead female character was named 'Liz.' 2 Over time, the relationship grew more complex. Readers were tantalized by what Jackie withheld, and her adamant refusal to reveal herself or her private life proved fertile ground for wildly speculative assertions and implausible fantasies. In soliciting readers' help in selecting a wedding dress for Jackie's remarriage, inviting them to suggest a hairstyle, and to pass judgment upon her hem lengths, the magazines fostered the public's sense of interactivity, creating the illusion that Jackie's was a life in which America got a vote. She was the first non-film star celebrity to whom the movie magazines applied the conventions of film-star fame.
Bookmarks Related papers MentionsView impact
Book Reviews by Oline Eaton
Celebrity Studies, 2019
Bookmarks Related papers MentionsView impact
Biography, 2018
Bookmarks Related papers MentionsView impact
Conferences by Oline Eaton
Programme for the conference held at Oxford on 19 September 2015
Further details available here:... more Programme for the conference held at Oxford on 19 September 2015
Further details available here: https://afterimage2015.wordpress.com
Bookmarks Related papers MentionsView impact
CFPs by Oline Eaton
Through a one-day conference entitled ‘After-Image: Life-Writing and Celebrity,’ we want to consi... more Through a one-day conference entitled ‘After-Image: Life-Writing and Celebrity,’ we want to consider the interplay between celebrity and life-writing. The conference will explore ideas of image, persona and self-fashioning in an historical as well as a contemporary context and the role these concepts play in the writing of lives.
Bookmarks Related papers MentionsView impact
Events by Oline Eaton
Bookmarks Related papers MentionsView impact
List of events for Life-Writers of London's 'Season of Celebrity', held in conjunction with the C... more List of events for Life-Writers of London's 'Season of Celebrity', held in conjunction with the Centre for Life-Writing Research at King's College London
Bookmarks Related papers MentionsView impact
Uploads
Articles by Oline Eaton
Book Reviews by Oline Eaton
Conferences by Oline Eaton
Further details available here: https://afterimage2015.wordpress.com
CFPs by Oline Eaton
Events by Oline Eaton
Further details available here: https://afterimage2015.wordpress.com